Diablo 2 Tips and Questions

[Diesel]

First off, the beta is WAY too limited for my tastes. I played it for an hour and finished everything I was supposed to. Now, I'm just running around doing the same old things.
Still, the game is decent, and I can see there's going to be a LOT more in the full version. If I can keep replaying the first 2 quests of the 1st Act this many times, the full game is going to have TONS of replayability.

Now, here are some of my personal tips:

Save chipped skulls for helms. They give you mana and life regeneration, and they're really not too much benefit in weapons or armor.

Don't put gems into socketed weapons right away. Carry them with you until you can find a gem shrine to upgrade them to better quality. Gems are hard enough to find, and once you put them in a weapon, you can't get them out to upgrade them.

Don't waste your time trying to sell magic armor for money. Once you've found a decent suit of armor, leave the others on the ground, since they take up too much space to carry back, and don't sell for that much.

Wands, rings, and amulets (in that order) fetch the most money in selling. Since they're also very small, they get the best return vs. storage requirements.


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From another BBS:
"hmm... Cyrix III, huh? You can put syrup on sh*t, but that don't make it pancakes."

[torvus]

Not to rain on your parade my man, but wands aren't always worth a lot of money. To be worth anything, they need to add to the skills of any given class. A wand that protects you versus fire for 8% is just not going to fetch all that much money. Now a wand that gives the necromancer +2 to his golem skill and +1 to bone spear? That's worth over 5000 right there.

And I have to disagree with you on the bit about gems being difficult to find. They are relatively easy to find. The gem shrines are next to impossible to find. Rumor mill has it that there will be one to two gem shrines per act. There's only five acts. That's enough to upgrade one, maybe two gems to flawless, perhaps perfect. Honestly, the only gem that's worth anything is the skulls in the helm. You can find magic weapons that will give you more benefits in the short run, until you can find a better weapon, like a unique. Gemmed weapons are for those who always wanted to build the perfect magic weapon, but couldn't find the combo they wanted. Let me put this plainly, gems are not worth it!

That's my two cents.

[Diesel]

Good points, but my experience tells me otherwise.
So far, I've only found one magical wand that had a sell value of less than 1500. Also, I have yet to find any non-magical wands. All of the rings I've found sold for less than 900.

As for gems being hard to find, I've only found slightly more gems than I have unique items.

Obviously, you haven't found enough gem shrines yet. Yes, they're next to impossible to find, but I managed to put together a 2-handed sword with 3 flawless rubies that deals more in fire damage than any magical weapon I've seen in the whole game. Furthermore, I have yet to find a unique weapon that even comes close to dealing the damage of any of the magical weapons I've found.

My experience is with 2 characters. One is Level 12 on BetaUSEast, the other is Level 10 on BetaUSWest. Go figure...


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From another BBS:
"hmm... Cyrix III, huh? You can put syrup on sh*t, but that don't make it pancakes."

[Foru2ctoo]

I, a bewildered man on the subject of this topic, speak out and say: huh? I have no clue what you guys are talking about! I shall probably understand it all once I get the game myself. At least it only four more days!